Neanderthal, Paleolithic art and archaeology, Hominin life histories, Cognitive archaeology, Archaeology of children, Levant and Europe
Accepting MA/PhD students.
I am a Paleolithic archaeologist whose research focuses on the origins of art, symbol use, and language, the evolution of modern human cognition and behavior, Neandertal lifeways, the archaeology of children and the history of archaeological theory.
My research in Paleolithic art includes fieldwork in Koonalda Cave, Southern Australia in conjunction with Traditional Owners. Thousands of years ago, people visited the cave and drew with their fingers in soft sediment covering its walls and ceilings. Studying these finger flutings give my colleagues and I a unique opportunity to look more closely at who entered the caves, who engaged in mark-making, as well as where and how people engaged with each other. This research is sponsored by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
I lead an international team of researchers in the study of hominins in NE Jordan. Our research question is a simple one—how could Homo erectus survive in an environment that would be challenging even for modern humans today? In 2016, we published the world’s oldest identifiable blood on stone tools (with new results to be published next year). We demonstrated that Homo erectus ate everything from ducks to rhinos and in order to do so they had to use a complex tool kit, follow very flexible hunting strategies (after all hunting ducks is very different from hunting/scavenging rhinos and Asian elephants), and organize themselves into smaller task specific groups, all while avoiding predators. Our research demonstrated that Homo erectus was more sophisticated technologically, socially and cognitively than anyone thought before. Our research is funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Leakey Foundation.
April Nowell, Cameron Walker, Carlos E. Cordova, Christopher J. H. Ames, James T. Pokines and Amer S. A. al-Asuliman. 2016. Middle Pleistocene subsistence in the Azraq Oasis, Jordan: Protein residue and other proxies. Journal of archaeological Science 73: 36-44.
Our team returns to Jordan in 2024 to continue our work in Azraq with a new SSHRC sponsored project called: The Longest Journey: Pleistocene Human-Environment Dynamics in the Azraq Basin (Jordan) and Their Implications For Early Human Dispersals Across Arid Southwest Asia
With Dr. Melanie Chang (Portland State University) (watch Dr. Chang’s TEDx talk), I research the relationship between science and the media and how our Paleolithic past is portrayed in popular culture. We have looked at the use of the term “pornographic” to describe Upper Paleolithic figurines (watch my TEDx here) as well as other topics including the "Paleo" Diet.
Collins, Benjamin and Nowell, April (eds). 2024. Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality. New York: Berghahn Books
2021. Nowell, April. Growing Up in the Ice Age: Fossil and Archaeological Evidence of the Lived lives of Plio-Pleistocene Children. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
2021. Davidson, Iain and Nowell, April (eds.). Making Scenes: Global Perspective on Scenes in Rock Art. New York: Berghahn Books.
2018. Gonlin, Nancy and Nowell, April (eds.). Archaeology of the Night. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.
Nowell, April and Skala, Aurora. 2024. The well-dressed hominin: clothing, tanning, and textile production in the Paleolithic. In Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality, edited by Benjamin R. Collins and April Nowell. New York: Berghahn Books
Collins, Benjamin R., Nowell, April, Hatton Amy, and Ames, Christopher J. H. 2024. Manufacturing social landscape: Ostrich eggshell bead production and social connections at Grassridge Rockshelter, South Africa. In Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality, edited by Benjamin R. Collins and April Nowell. New York: Berghahn Books.
2023. Skala, Aurora, Nowell, April, Walkus, Jennifer, and McLaren, Duncan. A storied landscape: Rock art in Kitasoo/Xai’xais, Heiltsuk, and Wuikinuxv territories. In New Approaches to Rock Art in Canada: Indigenous knowledges, Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Heritage, edited by Dagmara Zawadzka, Oscar Moro Abadía and Bryn Tapper. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
2022. Kubicka, Anna Maria, Wragg-Sykes, Rebecca, Nowell, April, and Nelson, Emma. Neanderthal Sexual Behaviour. In The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual Psychology, Volume 4, edited by Todd K. Shackelford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2021. Nowell, April, Kurki, Helen and Mitchell, Lisa M. Conceiving reproduction in archaeology. In Routledge Handbook on Anthropology and Reproduction, edited by Sallie Han and Cecelia Tomori. London: Routledge, pp. 68-84.
2021. Davidson, Iain and Nowell, April. Introduction. Behind the scenes—did scenes in rock art create new ways of seeing the world? In I. Davidson & A. Nowell (Eds.), Making scenes: global perspectives on scenes in rock art. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 1-16.
2021. Van Gelder, Leslie and Nowell, April. Scene makers: Finger fluters in Upper Paleolithic caves. In Making Scenes: Scenes in Global Rock Art, edited by Iain Davidson and April Nowell. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 194-206.
2021. Davidson, Iain and Nowell, April. Epilogue. Is there more to scenes than meets the eye? In Making Scenes: Global Perspectives on Scenes in Rock Art edited by I. Davidson and A. Nowell. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 327-331.
2021. Nowell, April and Cooke, Amanda. Culturing the body: adornment and ornamentation. In Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, edited by Andrew Lock, Chris Sinha and Nathalie Gontier. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1-32.
2020. Nowell, April and Gonlin, Nancy. Affordances of the night: Work after dark in the ancient world. In Rethinking Darkness: Histories, Cultures and Practices, edited by Timothy Edensor and Nick Dunn. New York: Routledge, pp. 27-37.
2020. Nowell, April and Kurki, Helen. Moving beyond the obstetrical dilemma hypothesis: Birth, weaning and infant care in the Plio-Pleistocene. In The Mother-Infant Nexus in Anthropology: Small beginnings, significant outcomes, edited by Siân Halcrow and Rebecca Gowland. New York: Springer, pp. 173-190.
2020. Chang, Melanie L. and Nowell, April. Conceiving of them, when before there was only us. In Archaeologies of the Heart, edited by Kisha Supernant, Natasha Lyons, Jane Baxter, and Sonya Atalay. New York: Springer, pp. 205-223.
Nowell, April and Macdonald, Danielle. Accepted. Culturing The Body In The Context of the Neolithisation of the Southern Levant. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
Nowell, April, Bahn, Paul, and Le Quellec, Jean-Loïc. Accepted. Evaluating the evidence for lunar calendars in Upper Paleolithic parietal art. Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
Nowell, April. 2023. Paleolithic children come of age. Invited paper for Childhood in the Past 16(1): 3-12.
2022. Nowell, April. Oral storytelling and knowledge transmission in Upper Paleolithic children and adolescents. Special Issue: Skill development and knowledge transmission. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 29(4).
2022. French, Jennifer and Nowell, April. Growing up Gravettian: Bioarchaeological perspectives on adolescence in the European Mid-Upper Paleolithic. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2022.101430
2022. Pokines, James T., Beller, Jeremy A., al-Souliman, Amer S. A., Samawi, Owani, Ames, Christopher J. H., Cordova, Carlos E., and Nowell, April. Radiometric dating of Wadi Zarqa Ma’in 1, a limestone sinkhole natural faunal trap near the Dead Sea, using data from test pitting and a portable coring system. Near Eastern Archaeology 85(3): 192-199.
2021. Ames, Christopher J. H., Cordova, Carlos E., Pokines, James T., Boyd, Kelsey, Schmidt, Christoph, Degering, Derlev, Kalbe, Johannes, Jones, Brian G., Dosseto, Anthony, Alsouliman, Amer, Beller, Jeremy, and Nowell, April. Mid to Late Quaternary Palaeolandscapes of the central Azraq basin, Jordan: deciphering discontinuous records of human-environment dynamics at the arid margin of the Levant. Special Issue: Geoarchaeology between Mediterranean areas and arid margins. Quaternary International. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2021.10.007
2021. Riede, Felix, Walsh, Matthew J., Nowell, April, Langley, Michelle and Johannsen, Niels N. Constructing the niches of and for innovation. Play objects and object play from a niche construction perspective. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2021.7
2020. Halcrow, Siân, Warren, Ruth, Kushnick, Geoff and Nowell, April. Care of infants in the past: Bridging paleoanthropological and bioarchaeological approaches. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 E47.
2020. Nowell, April, Langley, Michelle C., and Riede, Felix. 2020. Children and innovation: A Wenner‐Gren workshop. Evolutionary Anthropology 29(1): 6-8 doi.org/10.1002/evan.21816
2020. Collins, Benjamin R., Wojcieszak, Marine, Nowell, April, Hodgskiss, Tammy, and Ames, Christopher J. H. Beads and bead residues as windows to past behaviours and taphonomy: A case study from Grassridge Rockshelter, Eastern Cape, South Africa. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 12 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01164-5
2020. Nowell, April and French, Jennifer. Adolescence and Innovation in the European Upper Palaeolithic. Evolutionary Human Sciences 2 (e36): 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2020.37
2020. Nowell, April. Reconsidering the personhood of infants in the Gravettian. Journal of Anthropological Research 76(2): 232-250.
2020. Nowell, April and Van Gelder, Leslie. Disentangled: The Role of Finger Flutings in the Study of the Lived Lives of Upper Paleolithic Peoples. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 27(3):585-606. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-020-09468-5
2020. Beller, Jeremy, Ames, Christopher J. H. Ames and Nowell, April. Exploring Middle-Late Pleistocene lithic procurement strategies in the Azraq Basin: Preliminary results from Shishan Marsh 1, Jordan. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 29: 102091.
2020. Craig, Caitlin, Collins, Benjamin R., Nowell, April and Ames, Christopher J. H. The effects of heating ostrich eggshell: An experimental approach. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 31: 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102287
